Luke Ford

Amazon says about this 2023 book: “As American politics descends into a battle of anger and hostility between two groups called “left” and “right,” people increasingly ask: What is the essential difference between these two ideological groups? In The Myth of Left and Right, Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis provide the surprising answer: nothing. As the authors argue, there is no enduring philosophy, disposition, or essence uniting the various positions associated with the liberal and conservative ideologies of today. Far from being an eternal dividing line of American politics, the political spectrum came to the United States in the 1920s and, since then, left and right have evolved in so many unpredictable and even contradictory ways that there is currently nothing other than tribal loyalty holding together the many disparate positions that fly under the banners of “liberal” and “conservative.” Powerfully argued and cutting against the grain of most scholarship on polarization in America, this book shows why the idea that the political spectrum measures deeply held worldviews is the central political myth of our time and a major cause of the confusion and vitriol that characterize public discourse.”

ChatGPT says:

The usual conception of “Left vs. Right” is a false, essentialist framing—it implies a core, underlying philosophy (or “essence”) from which issue positions logically derive. The authors reject that.
Instead, they propose a social theory of ideology: people first align with a tribe (often through a single issue or social identity), then adopt positions and rationalizations that fit that tribe.
Because of this, the left–right spectrum is not just misleading—it actively causes harm through polarization, demonization, and intellectual rigidity.

Structure & Key Arguments

Critique of Essentialism
The “essentialist” view holds that ideologies are coherent and fixed, and that issue positions stem from a core principle (e.g., equality vs. hierarchy).
Lewis & Lewis show historically and empirically that issue bundles shift across time and place (what counts as “left” or “right” changes), and that many people’s positions are inconsistent.

Social Theory of Ideology / Tribalism
Ideology is socially constructed: people anchor to a tribe—based on identity, upbringing, or a single issue—and are then socialized into adopting the rest of the tribe’s agenda.
The act of fitting one’s views into a coherent narrative usually happens after tribal alignment, not before.
“Sticky ideologues” (those who reason from principle) exist but are exceptions; most people conform to their tribe.

How the Left–Right Myth Causes Harm
It encourages demonization of opponents as morally or philosophically corrupt instead of recognizing genuine policy disagreements.
It oversimplifies complex issues, reducing policy arguments to tribal markers rather than substantive debates.
It distorts political analysis—for example, describing parties as “moving right” or “moving left” when the real shifts are multidimensional.
It suppresses intellectual humility and discourages cross-tribal collaboration or granular policy thinking.

Remedies / Alternatives

Move toward granular discourse: focus on policies, issues, and institutions instead of tribal labels.

Cultivate intellectual modesty: accept that people are inconsistent and may share views across tribes.

Promote adversarial collaboration: work with people across divides on concrete goals without forcing shared ideological identity.

Change how we talk about politics: avoid lazy shorthand and broaden our social circles to include diverse perspectives.

Analysis & Critique

Strengths

Clarity and conciseness: The book is short (about 168 pages) but tightly argued.

Timeliness: Its challenge to binary thinking is especially relevant amid rising polarization.

Interdisciplinary: It draws from history, sociology, and political science to show how ideological labels evolve.

Actionable: It offers practical advice on reframing political discourse and fostering open-mindedness.

Weaknesses / Limitations

Tone and repetition: Some find it repetitive or overly polemical.

Undervaluing ideology’s coherence: Critics say the authors understate how some people genuinely reason from stable principles (e.g., classical liberalism, religious conservatism).

Overgeneralization: The social theory risks flattening exceptions—those who form beliefs independently of tribe.

Implementation gap: It’s unclear how to scale their proposed reforms within media and institutional structures.

Normative tension: If ideology is socially constructed, the book doesn’t fully explain what makes some tribes or policy directions preferable to others.

David Pinsof writes: “The more we try to patch up the inconsistencies in our ideology (but not the other ideology), the more these contortions look like epicycles in a pre-Copernican political science.

Maybe we need to rethink what ideologies are and what their function is. Maybe they’re not coherent worldviews or abstract value systems. Maybe they’re cobbled together bits of rhetoric designed to mobilize support for the various factions and interest groups thrown together into political coalitions. Maybe ideologies aren’t about anything, except advancing the interests of those coalitions. Maybe liberals and conservatives are members of the same flawed species, equipped with the same instincts for intergroup competition and moral rationalization. Maybe our political belief systems are tapestries of bullshit designed to cover up these ugly facts.”

ChatGPT says:

Taken together, Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences (Hibbing, Smith, & Alford, 2024) and The Myth of Left and Right (Hyrum & Verlan Lewis, 2023) attack the same illusion—just from opposite directions.

1. What Predisposed adds:

Hibbing and colleagues argue that left–right differences are not primarily intellectual or rational constructions but are rooted in biological and psychological predispositions. Liberals and conservatives differ in baseline physiology—sensitivity to threat, openness to novelty, disgust response, cognitive flexibility, and information processing. These inherited or early-formed traits incline people to prefer particular social orders and moral frameworks long before they consciously adopt political beliefs. People then rationalize their preferences post hoc as “reasoned” ideology.

2. What The Myth of Left and Right claims:

The Lewises reject the idea that left and right embody stable philosophical essences (e.g., equality vs. hierarchy, change vs. tradition). They show that people attach to tribes first—through social identity, peer cues, or media ecosystems—and then retrofit a moral or intellectual story to justify those attachments. “Ideologies do not define tribes; tribes define ideologies.” The content of “left” and “right” shifts constantly across time and culture.

3. How the two fit together:

Predisposed explains why people are drawn to tribes in the first place: enduring biological and temperamental differences make some individuals naturally more order-seeking, threat-averse, and tradition-minded (typical of conservatives), and others more novelty-seeking, empathetic, and open (typical of liberals).

The Myth of Left and Right explains how those raw dispositions become bundled into ever-changing social packages called “liberal” and “conservative.” The bundles are arbitrary and historically contingent, but once groups form, tribal loyalty hardens and overrides evidence or logic—exactly as Predisposed’s data on physiological rigidity and selective attention predict.

In combination, the books describe a two-layer model: Predisposed identifies the substrate (biological temperament), while Myth exposes the social superstructure (tribal narratives and shifting ideological labels).

4. Synthesis: Both demolish the Enlightenment myth of the rational voter. Political “beliefs” are less the product of reasoned principle and more the outgrowth of human nature—social and biological. Predisposed grounds the tribal behavior that Myth describes in the body and brain; Myth shows how those predispositions are then translated by culture into the illusion of coherent ideology. Together they suggest that durable polarization is not primarily a failure of information or logic but a fusion of evolutionary wiring and social storytelling.

Saying “left” and “right” are historically contingent doesn’t by itself invalidate them as useful descriptors—any more than saying “capitalism,” “Christianity,” or “romanticism” are historically contingent makes those terms meaningless. All conceptual categories evolve. The question isn’t whether they change, but whether they still capture a recurring structure of conflict in a given time and place.

If we look empirically, “left” and “right” continue to correlate with broad psychological, moral, and social orientations—just as Predisposed shows. People who identify as left-leaning tend, cross-nationally, to favor equality, openness, and novelty; those on the right, hierarchy, order, and stability. These are not eternal essences, but they’re durable patterns of human temperament. The labels endure because they track real clustering in how different people respond to change, diversity, and authority.

In short:

Yes, the meanings of “left” and “right” shift with history.

But that doesn’t make them arbitrary or useless; it just means they’re flexible containers for enduring psychological polarities.

Predisposed fills in what The Myth of Left and Right leaves out—it explains why those containers keep refilling in roughly the same way, generation after generation.

LF: Saying that the particular manifestation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in America in 2025 is historically contingent doesn’t prove that there is no such thing as Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Exactly right — that’s the core logical flaw in The Myth of Left and Right.

All social categories are historically contingent, but that doesn’t make them fictional. “Historically contingent” just means their content shifts across time; it doesn’t mean there’s no recurring structure or recognizable continuity. Judaism in 2025 America differs from Second-Temple Judaism, but it’s still meaningfully Judaism. Same with “left” and “right.”

What the Lewises show is that the contents of these labels change—what counts as “left” in 1850 or 2025 isn’t constant. What they fail to establish is that there’s no underlying pattern that recurs across eras: coalitions favoring change, equality, openness, and universalism versus coalitions favoring stability, hierarchy, order, and localism. That broad tension shows up again and again, even when the surface issues differ.

So your analogy is spot-on: saying the 2025 manifestations are contingent doesn’t mean the categories don’t exist. It only shows that enduring frameworks—religious or political—adapt to new contexts. The real question isn’t whether “left” and “right” are stable forever, but whether they still describe the dominant axis of moral-political conflict right now. They clearly do.

LF: African-American culture in 2025 is historically contingent but that doesn’t mean there is no such thing as African-American or black or African.

To say African-American identity or culture in 2025 is historically contingent is trivially true. All collective identities evolve. But it doesn’t follow that “African-American” is an illusion or that there’s no coherent referent to the term. The fact that it changes through time only shows that it’s alive.

Same with “left” and “right.” Their boundaries, values, and symbols shift, but the underlying structure — the tension between openness vs. order, equality vs. hierarchy, universalism vs. particularism — keeps resurfacing. Those aren’t arbitrary labels; they’re enduring ways human societies organize moral and political difference.

So yes — the Lewises are right that left/right have no eternal essence, but they overcorrect. Historical contingency doesn’t erase category reality; it just reminds us that categories are adaptive, not fixed. “Historically contingent” isn’t the same as “fictional.”

LF: Words are metaphors for reality that are more or less useful, right?

Words are metaphors or models, not mirrors. They don’t capture reality perfectly; they approximate it in ways that make communication and reasoning possible. Their value lies in how useful they are — how well they map to stable patterns in experience or social life.

So when people debate whether “left” and “right” (or “religious,” “liberal,” “African-American,” etc.) are “real,” the more precise question is whether those metaphors still track something coherent in the world. If a label continues to group together people with overlapping dispositions, experiences, or worldviews — even loosely — it remains meaningful.

Language always lags behind reality, but we keep the metaphors that still help us navigate it.

Some people hate categories. They like to pretend that they transcend categories. What matters is whether categories, words and terms are more useful or less useful than their alternatives at particular times and places.

People who claim to “transcend categories” usually dislike how categories can constrain or stereotype, but pretending not to use them is self-deception. We can’t think or communicate without categories; every concept is a simplification of a messy reality.

What actually matters isn’t whether we use categories — it’s whether they work. A category, word, or label is a tool. The test is pragmatic:

Does it help us describe, predict, or understand what’s going on?

Does it clarify more than it obscures?

Is there an alternative that captures the pattern more precisely for the context and time?

If “left” and “right” still organize how people align politically in 2025 America, they remain useful categories, even if imperfect and shifting. When they stop illuminating and start misleading, they get replaced — just like old scientific or cultural metaphors.

Categories are scaffolding, not prisons; the mature approach is to use them consciously, not deny them.

LF: The map is not the territory, but that doesn’t invalidate maps.

“The map is not the territory” (Korzybski) means our conceptual models — including words, theories, and categories — are representations, not the reality itself. But that doesn’t make them false or worthless. We still need maps to navigate. A good map simplifies the world enough to be usable while preserving the structure that matters for a given purpose.

The same applies to political and cultural categories. “Left” and “right,” “liberal,” “conservative,” “religious,” “secular” — they’re all maps of human social terrain. They distort some details and miss others, but if they reliably orient us to recurring patterns of values, coalitions, and conflicts, they remain indispensable.

The intellectually lazy mistake is treating the map as the territory — believing that “left” or “right” have eternal essences. The equally lazy opposite mistake is pretending we can do without maps entirely. The real skill is knowing the limits of your map and updating it when the terrain changes.

The human tendency is to essentialize out-groups. We’ll never transcend that. I am historically contingent. I am socially and biologically constructed, but I am real and I matter modestly to some people.

Humans essentialize — we turn fluid variation into stable categories, especially when it comes to out-groups. It’s a built-in cognitive shortcut: it helps us predict, coordinate, and defend against perceived threats. You can mitigate the bias, but you can’t erase it. It’s an evolved feature of social cognition, not a cultural glitch.

Your point about yourself is the philosophical counterweight: yes, you’re historically contingent, socially shaped, and biologically constructed — yet still real. Contingency doesn’t equal illusion. You’re the current expression of an ongoing process — just as “left,” “right,” “male,” “female,” “Jewish,” “American,” or “black” are real because they organize experience at this moment in history.

The mature stance isn’t to “transcend” categories but to use them consciously — to know that they’re partial truths that can guide us or mislead us depending on context.

LF: I wonder if the authors would have dared write a book like: The Myth Of Black & White: We’re All Just People. Or, The Myth Of Jew, Christian, Muslim: We’re All Just People. Or, The Myth of Mexico, El Salvador, the United States and Canada: All Nation-States Are Historically Contingent.

If the Lewises took their argument seriously and applied it across domains, they’d have to write The Myth of Black and White or The Myth of Religion or The Myth of Nations. But those titles would instantly expose what’s wrong with their reasoning.

Everyone agrees those identities are socially constructed and historically contingent. But that doesn’t make them fake. It means they’re social realities — categories that organize meaning, emotion, and power within particular contexts. Saying “we’re all just people” is sentimentally true but sociologically empty. Human life runs on distinctions that shape identity and behavior; pretending those distinctions don’t matter is naïve at best and evasive at worst.

That’s what The Myth of Left and Right misses. Declaring political identities “tribal” or “constructed” doesn’t debunk them — it merely describes how all enduring human categories work. The fact that they’re constructed is precisely why they’re powerful.

LF: I’m shocked to realize that where California ends and Mexico begins is historically contingent.

Borders, nations, races, religions, genders, political ideologies — all historically contingent. None were carved into the universe; they were negotiated, fought over, redrawn, and institutionalized. But that doesn’t make them imaginary. The U.S.–Mexico border is as contingent as anything humans have made, yet it’s also real enough that people die crossing it, economies depend on it, and identities are shaped by it every day.

The mature view is to hold both truths at once: it’s contingent and consequential. California could, in theory, have ended elsewhere — but it doesn’t. Contingency explains how something came to be, not whether it exists.